Baby showers are a wonderful way for friends and family to gather together to celebrate the expectant mother. As a way of saying thank you for attending the event, guests generally receive some sort of favor to take home. There are a variety of baby shower favors to choose from but the most popular are those that are fun and practical.
Candles are among the most popular favors given out at baby showers today. Available in a variety of shapes and colors, you can find candles to match just about any theme you may be planning for the party. Mini travel candles and votive candles are a couple of all time favorites that guests will enjoy receiving.
Bath related favors such as scented bath soaps, bath salts and bath confetti are always good choices. You can purchase small scented soaps and place them in organza bags to pass out to guests. Shower gel favors are another fun option to consider. Many times the outside label of the shower gel can be personalized to include mom’s name and shower date.
Candies and cookies are always a welcome treat to give to guests. Small candies such as mints, Jordan Almonds and pacifier-shaped candies placed in tins or favor boxes will be a hit at the baby shower. Cookie favors in baby themed shapes and decorated in colors that coordinate with the baby shower dcor can usually be ordered at local bakeries or purchased online.
With so many options choosing the right baby shower favors can be a little overwhelming. However, with a little thought you’ll find favors that your guests will truly appreciate.
Before making any game decision which you are going to spend hours of preparation before the baby shower, I’ll want to tell you the most popular types of baby shower games and other details that will make your Shower planning better.
The first type, games for creating memories.
If you’re good at creating scrapbook items, why not make some cute items for the parents-to-be to take home as reminders of this wonderful day?
As I know, most of these projects can be turned into great group activities.
Still have no clue?
For example, have you ever wondered what to do with over 100 guests at a baby shower? Oops, it’s extremely difficult to coordinate some of the traditional baby shower games, so why not make a placemat for each guest and let them doodle?
Crosswords, word scrambles, matching games…they can all be added. Just cut out some of your favorite printable baby shower games and paste them to both sides of a piece of paper.
Then decorate with baby pictures and such, then take it to your local copy store, like Kinkos, and have them print the page on pastel colored paper. At the Shower, guests can fill in the puzzles, or just doodle. Have a small prize for the first person who has both sides filled out correctly.
Ok, the next one would be the coed Shower games.
Let’s face it: More and more baby showers are including new Dads and couples, so why do you think Dads want to be left out of the fun?
You will say, "I need those baby shower game ideas talk a lot about the parents-to-be, not just the mom-to-be."
No problem.
When you decide to celebrate a new life with the New Dad together, here is a few hints:
– Get the male guests to buy-in before hand, and agree to play games
– Invite more than 3 guys – don’t let the dad-to-be stay alone at the baby shower.
– Don’t play those ooh-and-aah types of girls’ games – they are not suitable for men, like measure Mom’s tummy or talk about "girl-stuff" like birth stories or labor.
– Make your game ideas competitive and fun to get the guys out their seats and love to play, like the famous Guys and Dolls and Baby Jeopardy (of course, then the men will most likely say "that’s so easy, any man can do it better"… and let them find out they can’t!)
You can even get guys involving into the scrapbook making during your coed baby shower. The outcome is usually great.
And how about having activities with no winners?
Yes, I mean it and people love it too!
Do you know baby shower games don’t always need to have a winner? Sometimes just an activity provides all the fun you need, like baby story which is all about gathering the baby essentials.
You will use words that are brand names or names of products that are presented to the parents-to-be as the story is read. Just put in the Mom-to-be’s name – and Dad’s too, if he’s at the baby shower party. The words in BOLD are brand names or names of products to be presented as the words are read. You can even get creative and add new products into the story.
The last and my most favorite one, the pencil and paper game.
Pencil and paper based baby shower game ideas are always a great addition to any Shower because they require the least materials and usually the shortest prep time. A very popular choice is the Baby Safety Bingo.
You can create a baby shower bingo game card with answers in each square – which means your guests will want to pay attention because there’s going to be a quiz!
Tips: It also means you will need to create a quiz ahead of time. As you read quiz questions aloud, each guest marks the right answer box, or uses a Hershey’s Kiss to cover the appropriate square on their bingo card to match five in a row, up, down, or diagonal. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Baby Safety Checklist can be found at: www.cpsc.gov)
Quiz questions should include things like "One of these will prevent children from falling down stairs" and "If burst or un-inflated, these can be a choking hazard to young children" – where the answers in the Bingo square are "baby gate" and "balloons."
Gone are the days when baby showers were designed on generic, age old clichs and ideas. Today, most expectant parents design the baby shower around a theme with most of these themes revolving around the gender of the child to be. Everything is planned and designed according to the theme.
There are three directions or broader themes around which any baby shower party would revolve- boy, girl or twins. So, if you know that the shower party is inclined towards a particular gender of the child to be, then you ought to choose a gift that suits the theme and the general mood of the party.
On the part of the parents as well, it becomes all the more important to design and set their party up in such a way that it speaks volumes about the themes of the party. For a party set around a boy, everything from shower favors, to the centerpiece and the cake should be in consonance with the theme. Darker and more sober colors, such as blue and black should be used appropriately. The choice of baby shower favors boys-type should be kept in mind. Guests should also prepare the gifts accordingly, which might include diapers, pacifiers and boys-toys such as cars, trucks and toy weapons. Be careful that you are not presenting anything that has a potential choking hazard associated with it.
Again, if you know that you are going to be blessed with a baby girl, you should keep the theme more girls centric. Apart from using liberal quantities of pink in dcor, food, beverages and cakes, you should be certain that you have narrowed down your choice of favor to baby shower favors girls would love to cherish after looking at their shower pictures and photographs, few years after their birth. Guests should choose their gifts accordingly as well. Clothes containing more shades of pink and red, with frills and ribbons all over should suffice. To add an additional flavor, you can amalgamate your gift with a choice of selected baby-edible chocolates, which girls would just adore.
Finally, you might be one of those lucky few to have been blessed by twin babies. The selection of baby shower favors twins would love becomes all the more important in this case, because it does not happen everyday that a couple is blessed by twins. Instead of one cake, centerpiece and diaper cake, you could have a pair. As another addition, you could orient the party towards the gender of you twin babies, if you happen to know it before delivery. The best case arises if one of the babies would be a girl and the other one would be a boy. In such a situation, the opportunities you have while designing the whole baby shower party are limitless. From colors to cakes to diapers and even food and favors, you can include a whole gamut of supplies, without having to worry too much about the appropriateness of the thing being used relative to the theme.
This author lives in Hampton, NJ with her husband and 5 month old daughter and is an expert contributing author for a luxury baby shower favors boutique offering variety of baby gift baskets, dropship baby gifts, handprint footprint kits and more.
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